Hospitalized patients often require patient care equipment to be in close proximity during their hospital stay. Such patient care equipment may include any one or more of the following: service connectors, heart monitors, defibrillators, infusion pumps, equipment monitors and other medical instruments, many of which directly connect to the patient via lines or tubes. Some of the service connectors may be medical gas connectors to provide medical gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and air. Service connectors may also include electrical power outlets to supply electrical power and medical gas connectors to provide medical gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and air. Some of the service connectors may be data communication ports to receive and transmit data, such as, for example, audio, video, and patient information.
The medical equipment is typically mounted in an operating room, emergency room, critical care room, lab area or the like, to an overhead mounting structure attached to the overhead building structure. The mounting structure is typically custom-designed, fabricated and permanently welded or affixed to an existing overhead building structure. Alternatively, the equipment may be mounted with the help of mounting hangers which are connected to surgical beds, IV poles or other supporting structures. The mounting hangers typically used for attaching the equipment with surgical beds, IV poles or other supporting structures, however, do not provide much operational flexibility to a user. In most of the commercially available mounting solutions, a bed rail hanger bracket is permanently affixed to equipment housings and cannot be user adjusted or optimized in any way. In mounting systems that do provide a limited degree of flexibility in changing the position of the mounted equipment, the process of removal and repositioning of the equipment is highly cumbersome. The equipment is typically coupled to mounting hangers through fastening means such as screws and nuts, which makes the process of attaching/detaching the equipment from a mounting hanger very time consuming. The process involves tools to disengage the fastening means and detach the equipment from a mounting hanger and then to attach the equipment to the mounting hanger in a different position and then reengage the fastening means.
The typical commercially available mounting hangers are not symmetrical about a connecting portion or the locking access area within a corresponding equipment housing. As a result, the equipment can be engaged in only one specific orientation. Restrictions with mounting the medical equipment in a specific orientation do not allow the user to optimize the placement of medical equipment in the operating area. As a result, many times, the intravenous lines, tubes and wires coupled to the medical equipment are left to dangle or hang between patient care equipment and the patient.
The medical equipment is placed inside a housing comprising the means/receivers to engage with a corresponding set of mounting hangers. The typical housing used to receive the medical equipment is bulky and the receivers are also prominently visible. Further, the receivers are not designed in a symmetrical shape that would allow for the mounting of equipment in multiple orientations.
Further, in currently available mounting hangers, vertical movement of the equipment, such as raising or lowering the equipment level relative to a bed surface, is not easy as it involves disengaging a mounting hanger from a surgical bed or supporting structure and then, if the configuration permits, re-engaging the mounting hanger at the desired height. Typically, a technician has to remove the medical equipment from a mounting hanger before changing the vertical position of the hanger, which in itself is a very tedious process.
Therefore, there is a need for a quick and tool-less solution for mounting equipment (medical or other) to surgical beds, IV poles or other support structures in a variety of orientations, allowing the user to optimize the orientation for the most efficient routing of electronic cables and/or patient leads emanating from the equipment. There is also a need for solutions that allow for quick connection and disconnection of a piece of equipment from a corresponding mounting hanger. There is also a need for mounting solutions in which a connecting portion or the locking access area in the equipment housing is symmetrical in design and allows engaging the equipment in multiple orientations. There is also a need for equipment housings that have multiple sets of receivers for engaging with the mounting hangers and thus, allowing for quick vertical repositioning of the equipment.